And still I rise...

For International Women’s Day

INVITATION FOR YOU: Join our Siren Songs for International Women's Day 2025

Today, I want to share, not my words, but the words that have kept me going in the worst of times and the best of times. Maya Angelou’s book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings changed the trajectory of my life when I was a teenager.

Do you have a poem or a story or a chapter or a quote that you turn to over and over again?

I love this poem, I love Maya Angelou, her strength, her humour, her wisdom.

Today, WE rise.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Still I Rise

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Copyright Credit: Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994)